Yesterday has been…a trip. Pictures are worth a thousand blog entries so I’ll start with this:

@ Tower Records, Japan

There was a time in my life, not too long ago, before all this newfangled MP3 biznass where every Tuesday I would go to The Wherehouse (it’s a record store that’s now gone bankrupt) and eye all the latest releases. I LOVED that New Releases shelf. It was the highlight of my week and if only I had invested all the money I had spent on CD’s back then on Apple stock I would be writing this from the Carribean right now (oh HEY shout out to Derek who is on a mo’fucking Carribean boat right now!) but that’s neither here nor there. Basically fam, basically what I’m trying to say is… to see an album I’ve worked on, IN STORES, IN JAPAN, IN that NEW RELEASE shelf that I love so much…what a trip.

So yes, as of today 11/23 Home:Word is available nation wide in stores in Japan. And even crazier, the album debuted at #3 on the Hip Hop Charts!!!

Big shout out to Goon Trax our label who have been nothing but the most amazing professionals to work with! They even sent along this beautiful picture they made to commemorate the release!

Don’t we look purty?

And finally, some useful links for buying Home:Word [Japan Edition]!
iTunes
Tower Records
HMV
Amazon
CD Japan

As always – thanks fam for the nonstop support!

This post will be a quickie… (honey get yo mind out of the guttah!) … but very soon we will flood you, overwhelm you, INUNDATE you with some amazing footage and pics from our release day epicness. We’ve just been catching up on sleep. :]

Back to the quickie – Home:Word is now available on iTunes and Amazon!! This is actually the very first Magnetic North album to get on iTunes and Amazon (damn that pesky copyright thing on Drift Away…) so preview, buy, and please shoot us a review! Because we have no idea what you think about the album. I mean if this were elementary school and you started picking on us and punching us then obviously you like us, but we aren’t in elementary school anymore so an itunes/amazon review will have to do. Haha.

Buy on iTunes

Buy on Amazon

Love ya fam!

If ya’ll are anything like us you have a hard time choosing appetizers at a restaurant…there’s just so much fatty deliciousness to partake in…how to pick just one? Well…thank whatever genius invented the SAMPLER. Why choose when you can have a little bit of everything? That’s what chef DJ Boo did for us w/ the album…cutting and slicing thick morsels of songs to serve to you on a hot platter. Click below to see what we have for you on Home:Word…

PS: I promise to never write anymore blog entries during lunchbreak. I’m obviously starved.

June 4th fam, save it save it. Put an X on your calendar. Or maybe a gold star. Or lots of little arrows.

Cuz if you’re going to be in the NYC area, you need to come hang with us on June 4th for our record release party. We’ll be playing the whole album live…and no I don’t mean we’re going to pop it into a boombox (haha), I mean we our bringing the Home:Word House Band through and all the featured guests on the album and playing the damn thing for you LIIIIIVE. If you never seen the band play with us yet you got to come through…they are disgustingly sick and I hate them for being so talented because it makes me feel like a loser.

Other reasons to come?
- Hyphen Magazine is coming to NY for the first time in 7 years! They will be celebrating the release of their  TWENTIETH issue (The Inside/Out) so yes, this is a CO-RELEASE of epic scale. You know they’ll be doing something special.

- Special guests special guests special guests. We’ll give you the full list of them very very soon, just waiting on a few…more…confirmations.

- You get to have a pick up a copy of the album early…!

So yes fam, please mark your calendars. Especially if you have one of those asian grocery market calendars. Because those are extra fly.

Though Magnetic North was birthed in the beautiful Bay and Taiyo Na was born and raised in NYC, MNTN would not have come to be without a little loving from…Boston. Home of the Celtics (sorry Cav fans), the most colleges in the US (according to this tour I went on where I rode in a duck boat), and the best stankface in ALL THE LAND (more on this soon). Also…home of:

Boston Progress is in many ways my second home. Literally, because I slept at THwangs place every wknd, and figuratively because I finally found a set of folks that were as crazy strange as I was. If you’re an Asian American nerd with a deep love for music, art and activism … Boston Progress is your mothership. I’m talking about sitting in a circle sipping Brooklyn Lagers and freestyling about Yuri Kochiyama and phospholipids in the same line. But what do you expect when your beatboxer is a post-doc at MIT and the guy spitting fire next to you is about to be a surgeon. I remember it being such a revelation…these are grown ass people with demanding day jobs who still have the heart and energy to put in work for the community and their art. It’s inspiring.

Anyway, you say, what does this have to do with MNTN? Two things.
1) Giles Li (one of the founders of Boston Progress…and that name sounds familiar right? that’s because he’s a famous-ass poet) introduced Taiyo and I at his wedding. He sat us at the “artist” table. And dude is even claiming rights on MNTN here, haha.

2) A picture is worth a thousand words so…



That’s right. Chucky Stankface Kim. If you don’t know who he is you will very very soon.